Native Steam on Linux

Note: If you have a pure 64-bit installation, you will need to enable the multilib repository in pacman. This is because the Steam client is a 32-bit application. It may also make sense to install multilib-devel to provide some important multilib libraries. You also most likely need to install the 32-bit version of your graphics driver to run Steam.

Steam is not supported on this distribution. As such some fixes are needed on the users part to get things functioning properly. Several games have dependencies which may be missing from your system. If a game fails to launch (often without error messages) then make sure all of the libraries listed below that game are installed. Please install libtxc_dxtn and lib32-libtxc_dxtn as almost all games require it.

General troubleshooting

Note: In addition to being documented here, any bug/fix/error should be, if not already, reported on Valve's bug tracker on their GitHub page.

Note: Connection problems may occur when using DD-WRT with peer-to-peer traffic filtering.

GUI problems with KDE

If you are using KDE and you have problems with the GUI (such as lag or random crashes) modify the compositing type to OpenGL/Raster. In KDE system settings, go to "Desktop Effects" in the "Workspace Appearance and Behaviour" section. Open the "Advanced" tab. Change "Compositing type" from XRender to OpenGL.

The close button only minimizes the window

If you have your tray icon working you have the option of making the close button close to tray instead of minimize. To do this, set the environment variable STEAM_FRAME_FORCE_CLOSE to 1. You can do this by launching Steam using the following command.

Black screen on (Valve?) games (but audio works)

Game-specific depencencies and troubleshooting

Note: Steam installs library dependencies of a game to a library directory, but some are missing at the moment. Report bugs involving missing libraries on Valve's bug tracker on their GIT page before adding workarounds here, and then provide a link to the bug so it can be removed as the issues are fixed. Libraries like glu and libtxc_dxtn are exceptions to this, as they are just part of the implementation of the open drivers.

Troubleshooting

No audio

{community,multilib}-testing/steam 1.0.0.28-3 has should export this variable inside /usr/bin/steam

export the variable somewhere before in your system.

export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa

Black map

1. If the map is black and you don't see the character portraits, remove the first two lines and the last line from ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Crusader Kings II/gfx/FX/standardfuncsgfx.fxh, and install lib32-libtxc_dxtn (source). This fix worked on ATI Radeon with open-source drivers.

2. Thought the solution mentioned in (source article) might help a lot of affected, even there in disc. were also many people, whom this solution helped only partially, or not at all. Alternate option, if previous ain't working might be to try install the proprietary graphics drivers instead of those open-source one.

FTL: Faster than Light

Dependencies

Libraries are downloaded and and placed in the game's data directory for both architectures. As long as you run FTL by the launcher script (or via the shortcut in Steam) you should not need to download any further libraries.

Compatibility

After installation, FTL may fail to run due to a 'Text file busy' error (characterised in Steam by your portrait border going green then blue again). The easiest way to mend this is to just reboot your system. Upon logging back in FTL should run.

The Steam overlay in FTL does not function as it is not a 3D accelerated game. Because of this the desktop notifications will be visible. If playing in fullscreen, therefore, these notifications in some systems may steal focus and revert you back to windowed mode with no way of going back to fullscreen without relaunching. The binaries for FTL on Steam have no DRM and it is possible to run the game without Steam running, so in some cases that may be optimum - just ensure that you launch FTL via the launcher script in ~/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/FTL Faster than Light/data/ rather than the FTL binary in the $arch directory.

Problems with open-source video driver

FTL may fail to run if you are using an opensource driver for your video card. There are two solutions: install a proprietary video driver or delete (rename if you are unsure) the library "libstdc++.so.6" inside ~/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/FTL\ Faster\ Than\ Light/data/amd64/lib This is if you are using a 64bit system, I suppose that in case you are using a 32bit system you have to remove (rename) the same library located into ~/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/FTL\ Faster\ Than\ Light/data/x86/lib.

Killing Floor

Troubleshooting

Screen resolution

Killing Floor runs pretty much from scratch, although you might have to change in-game resolution screen as the default one is 800x600 and a 4:3 screen format.
If you try to modify screen resolution in-game, it might crash your desktop enviroment.
To fix this, please set the desired resolution screen size by modifing your ~/.killingfloor/System/KillingFloor.ini with your prefered editor.

Note: Replace all the ???? with the corresponding numbers according the desired resolution. If you have an 1366x768 screen and want to use it at it's fullest, change all the Viewport fields to something like ViewportX=1366 and ViewportY=768 in the corresponding areas.

Note: The dots in the middle indicate that there are more fields in that .ini file. But for screen resolution troubleshooting, you don't need to modify anything else.

Save the file and restart the game, it should work now.

Windowed Mode

Uncheck fullscreen in the options menu, and use Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress to stop mouse capturing (that was non obvious to discover..). This way you can easily minimize it and do other other things..and let your WM handle things.

Penumbra: Overture

Dependencies

Troubleshooting

Windowed Mode

There is no in-game option to change to the windowed mode, you will have to edit ~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Overture/settings.cfg to activate it.
Find FullScreen="true" and change it to FullScreen="false", after this the game should start in windowed mode.

Troubleshooting

No audio

If that doesn't work, try tweaking ~/.alsoftrc as proposed by the Steam community (Serious Sam 3: BFE uses OpenAL to output sound). If you are not using Pulse Audio, you may want to write the following configuration:

Skins for Steam

The Steam interface can be fully customized by copying its various interface files in its skins directory and modifying them.

Steam Skin Manager

The process of applying a skin to Steam can be greatly simplified using steam-skin-managerAUR from the AUR. The package also comes with a hacked version of the Steam launcher which allows the window manager to draw its borders on the Steam window.

As a result, skins for Steam will come in two flavors, one with and one without window buttons. The skin manager will prompt you whether you use the hacked version or not, and will automatically apply the theme corresponding to your GTK theme if it is found. You can of course still apply another skin if you want.

The package ships with two themes for the default Ubuntu themes, Ambiance and Radiance. A Faience theme is under development and already has its own package on the AUR steam-skin-faience-gitAUR.

Steam on Wine

Install wine from the official repositories and follow the instructions provided in the article.

Using a Pre-Existing Steam Install

If you have a shared drive with Windows, or already have a Steam installation somewhere else, you can simply symlink the Steam directory to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/ . However, be sure to do all the previous steps in this wiki. Confirm Steam launches and logs into your account, then do this:

Note: If you have trouble starting Steam after symlinking the entire Steam folder, try linking only the steamapps subdirectory in your existing wine steam folder instead.

Note: If you still have trouble starting games, use sudo mount --bind /path/to/SteamApps ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps -ouser=your-user-name , this is the only thing that worked for me with TF2

Running Steam in a second X Server

Assuming you are using the script above to start Steam, make a new script, called x.steam.sh. You should run this when you want to start Steam in a new X server, and steam.sh if you want Steam to start in the current X server.

Because the second X server is only running the game and the first X server with all your programs is backgrounded, performance should increase. In addition, it is much more convenient to switch X servers while in game to access other resources, rather than having to exit the game completely or Template:Keypress-Template:Keypress out. Finally, it is useful for when Steam or WINE goes haywire and leaves a bunch of processes in memory after Steam crashes. Simply Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress on the second X server to kill that X and all processes on that desktop will terminate as well.

If you get errors that look like "Xlib: connection to ":1.0" refused by server" when starting the second X: You will need to adjust your X permissions.

If you lose the ability to use the keyboard while using Steam: This is an odd bug that does not happen with other games. A solution is to use a WM in the second X as well. Thankfully, you do not need to run a large WM. Openbox and icewm have been confirmed to fix this bug (evilwm, pekwm, lwm do not work), but the icewm taskbar shows up on the bottom of the game, thus it's recommended to use Openbox. Install openbox from the official repositories, then add openbox & to the top of your steam.sh file. Note you can run other programs (ex. Teamspeak &) or set X settings (ex. xset, xmodmap) before the WINE call as well.

Steam Links in Firefox, Chrome, Etc

To make steam:// urls in your browser connect with steam in wine, there are several things you can do. One involves making steam url-handler keys in gconf, another involves making protocol files for kde, others involve tinkering with desktop files or the Local State file for chromium. These seem to only work in firefox or under certain desktop configurations. One way to do it that works more globally is using mimeo, a tool made by Xyne (an Arch TU) which follows. For another working and less invasive (but firefox-only) way, see the first post here .

Restart the browser and you should be good to go. In chromium, you cannot enter a steam:// link in the url box like you can with firefox. The forum link above has a steam://open/friends link to try if needed.

Note: If you have any problems with file associations after doing this, simply revert to regular xdg-utils and undo your changes to /usr/bin/xdg-open.

Note: Those on other distributions that stumble upon this page, see the link above for firefox specific instructions. No easy way to get it working on Chromium on other distros exists.

No text rendered problem

If there is no text/font rendered when starting steam you should try to start steam with the parameter -no-dwrite. Read more in the forum thread about it.